Doctor Who solves the Roswell crash

November 29, 2009, 12:00 am

By SFR Staff

Hello, New Mexico. Julia gave me permission to jump back on the ol' Reeper for a one-time post about my favorite, favorite TV show: Doctor Who. Why? Because in the latest animated serial, the Timelord solves the mystery of the Roswell crash.

A few years ago, I wrote a brief about the Doctor's adventures in New Mexico, which pretty much boiled down to a short battle in 1957 with his arch-nemesis, The Master, at a fictional Air Force base. That happened in one of the spin-off books and as far as I know, he's never had a televised adventure in the Land of Enchantment (which is strange considering NM's interstellar ambitions and extraterrestrial mania).

Well, in Dreamtime, which ran in five parts last week, the Doctor did not visit New Mexico in the animated flesh. The adventure only starts there with a flying saucer getting shot down by other flying saucers and crashing into the desert outside of Roswell.

This isn't the first time Roswell has come up in Doctor Who and it seems at odds with what Who-nerds call the "canon." Previously, it was described as a cosmic "fender-bender" by the Doctor and later shrugged off by his companion, Sarah Jane, as only a minor event in human-alien history.

This go around, Doctor Who gets it wrong, big time, as illustrated by the above screen capture. The Roswell crash did not occur on June 13, 1947 but on July 8 of that year. Secondly, as anyone in New Mexico knows: though I-25 bisects the state, it doesn't come nearly that close to Roswell. And let's not even delve into the cave-dwelling, bows-and-arrows portrayal of Native Americans.

Spoiler Alert: The "little grays," as Roswellians call them are from species that was nearly obliterated by a race of giant cockroaches called the Viperox; they had developed a genetic poison capable of exterminating the entire Viperox race from the universe. Obviously, the anti-genocidalist Doctor won't let that happen, but he does help rescue the shot-down Grays from Area 51--with the help of a diner waitress and a Native American rockabilly--and uses their technology to chase the Viperox out of the solar system before they can savage the Earth.

Dreamland (which you can watch at Life, Universe and Combom), is one of the last adventures of the 10th Doctor, played by David Tennant, who will meet his doom in the two-parter scheduled for Christmas and New Years. It's a much lighter, kid-oriented serial, compared to the November special, the Waters of Mars (airing in the US on BBC America on Dec 1q), which saw the Doctor pull an Anakin Skywalker and that's all I'm gonna say.